The City of Charlotte is a little more than a year into a multi-year effort to draft a comprehensive Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), which will update the policies and regulations that guide land use and development in Charlotte. When finished, the UDO will combine zoning districts and development ordinances in a single document that should allow for more a streamlined regulatory process.

The two major components of the UDO will include:

Policies:Place Types are a classification of land that provides guidance for how future development should look and function. They describe types and intensities of land use as well as important characteristics such as scale, site design, and accessibility.

Regulations: The UDO will be the primary tool to implement Place Types and Charlotte’s other plans and policies through development regulations. It will combine multiple development ordinances, including the Zoning Ordinance, into one set of regulations.

REBIC has been working closely with City staff over the past year to provide feedback on the effort, and the real estate development industry is well represented on the UDO Advisory Committee.

To help community members understand the UDO process and broaden the opportunities for stakeholder input, the City will host a half-day Community Summit later in March. Realtors®, home builders, developers, and others in the real estate industry are encouraged to attend.

What Can UDO Summit

Saturday, March 24th

8:30 am – 1:30 pm

UNC Charlotte Center City, 320 E. 9th Street

The summit will give participants a chance to meet the City’s new Planning Director, Taiwo Jaiyeaba, and hear from keynote speaker Mitchell Silver, FAICP. Mitch Silver was previously the Chief Planning & Development Officer for the City of Raleigh and the President of the American Planning Association. He now serves as the New York City Parks Commissioner and is internationally recognized for his leadership in the planning profession and his contributions to today’s planning issues.

The summit will also include two interactive workshops, from 9:30 am to 11:30 am, which are focused on “Living and Thriving in Charlotte.” The summit provides an important opportunity for stakeholders to ask questions about the project and share input regarding key issues such as how we’ll accommodate future growth in our community and respect established neighborhood character.

The federal budget deal signed by President Trump last Friday contains a number of wins for real estate, including a temporary extension of federal flood insurance and extension of tax provisions that include relief from debt forgiveness, the deductibility of mortgage insurance premiums, and several energy-efficiency related provisions.

Flood Insurance

Extends the National Flood Insurance Program until March 23, giving lawmakers time to work on longer term reauthorization and reform legislation. It also adds $27 billion in mitigation and resiliency funds to address issues arising from last year’s hurricanes. The extension makes $12 billion available under the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program to fund U.S. Army Corp of Engineers flood mitigation projects.

Mayor Lyles opens the 2018 City Council Planning Retreat last week in Durham

DURHAM, NC — When Mayor Vi Lyles and the Charlotte City Council arrived in Durham Wednesday afternoon for the start of their 3-day planning retreat, the stage had already been set for a fascinating interplay between a series of emerging dynamics: Young vs. Old, Millennial vs. Boomer, Revolution vs. Status Quo. And with a menu of topics on their plate ranging from affordable housing and job creation, to sewer capacity and the completion of a new Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), the conversation and debate was sure to be one for the books.

Affordable Housing dominated Day 2 of the retreat, which was held at the comfortable Washington-Duke Inn, just outside the Duke University campus. After an economic overview by the always-fascinating Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner, council members jumped into a full-throated discussion about affordable housing and creating ‘great’ neighborhoods — without once recognizing that the two goals may, in fact, be somewhat incompatible. Some of the highlights: Continue reading →

In the wake of last week’s cybercrime attack, Mecklenburg County is continuing to make progress on restoring permitting systems to full functionality. LUESA is running tests on the POSSE system today, and pending those results, is hoping to have it back up and running by tomorrow or Thursday.

LUESA director Ebenezer Gujjarlapudi told REBIC today he is confident that no plans or review comments were lost during the hack, so the department should be able to pick up where they left off once everything is back online.

Code Enforcement has been averaging about 1,000 inspections a week since the system collapsed, so they don’t expect there will be much (if any) of a backup once the system returns to normal. In addition, the County says they’ve had a number of on-schedule reviews completed this week using the paper process, and once the system is back up, they’ll contact all customers in the queue to let them know how they’ll be proceeding with their scheduled reviews. Again, they seem to expect a minimal disruption. Continue reading →

An Update for Our Customers

As the situation with Mecklenburg County’s computer system outage continues to develop, we want to keep our customers as informed as possible of the steps Code Enforcement staff is taking to help our customers. As of the afternoon of Wednesday, Dec. 6th:

Phone and e-mail systems are functional. MeckPermit.com is functional, but in some instances, that functionality may be limited, when the site links to or interacts with a program that has not yet been restored.

The following systems are still UNAVAILABLE: Permitting & Inspections software (also known as POSSE Outrider or the contractor login), Online Permitting (also known as HIP and TIP), Electronic Plan Management (EPM). Several smaller systems that support these programs or our daily business processes are also unavailable.

Inspections are being performed, but scheduled and managed manually. Since our inspections scheduling methods are currently unavailable, please call your inspector directly to request an inspection. If you do not have your inspector’s number, please call the Customer Service Center at 980-314-CODE or check our online staff directory.

When systems are restored, we will work closely with our plan review customers who had scheduled reviews pending. Plan Review customers with questions should contact their plan review coordinator directly.

We are exploring options for significantly scaled-back manual plan review and permitting processes. We will update you when a modified process is available.

If you are facing an urgent situation, such as the need to have an inspection so power can be restored to a home, or having deadlines such as closing on a home purchase, please contact the Customer Service Center at 980-314-CODE, or your inspector or coordinator, if you have their contact information.

Our office will remain open during regular business hours and our staff will be putting in extra time to help our customers as more of our systems are restored. Commercial and residential technical assistance is still available.

Our priority is minimizing the impact on our customers and community. We are committed to helping resolve each problem as quickly and efficiently as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience.

We will continue to update you, our valued customers, as we have more to report.

The Charlotte City Council this week voted 8-1 to refer a controversial sidewalk ordinance back through its committee process, after REBIC and top affordable housing developers voiced concerns over the impact on housing costs.

The ordinance under consideration would require all owners of by-right property along a city thoroughfare to install 6’ sidewalks and 8’ planting strips along their entire frontage when certain development thresholds are met. Unless that property already has a sidewalk at least 4’ in width, along with a planting strip of another 4’, the sidewalk is considered ‘substandard’, and would have to be replaced with a new sidewalk meeting the standards above. Continue reading →

The 2017 Session of the North Carolina General Assembly adjourned at 2 a.m. on June 30th, after one of the most hectic weeks of legislative activity in memory. With much left undone, legislators announced they will return to Raleigh on August 3rd to consider a limited range of topics (e.g., any veto overrides, bills that were in conference at the end of the session, potential redistricting issues). Further action on other legislation must wait for next year’s “short” session, set to convene on May 16, 2018.

The key legislation for the real estate and building industry are summarized below: Continue reading →